In performance testing, there is a common practice of examining the speed, durability, and/or reliability of a tested software feature, component, or system. One of the primary concerns of software developers is identifying the cause of errors in the software applications, such as errors that cause software applications to crash unexpectedly. In order to effectively identify errors, it is important to know what interaction a user (e.g., customer or quality assurance tester) had with the software application before the error occurred. In some current solutions, when a software application experiences an error, an error report is generated to send to the software developer. As part of the report, the user may be asked to write down what they have done and what keys they pressed before the error occurred to help the software developer to reproduce the error. Unfortunately, the user may not remember exactly what they were doing and what software applications they were interacting with at the time of the error. Even if the user is able to remember the commands (or history output was available), the report is still missing some of the information, such as the program's output that could be crucial for identifying and remedying the error.
Conventional solutions provide only client-side logging that are used to record the user's interactions at the client's device. These conventional solutions, however, need to be enabled first, and is completely based on the user's will to log. One conventional solution has a client reporting tool that allows customers to record reproducible steps automatically, and ship the output file to the software vendor for more comprehensive reporting and remedying the software defect. For example, screenshots can be captured and the steps leading up to a software defect can be reproduced, such as the keyboard strokes or the mouse's cursor movements. Not only are these conventional solutions limited to client-side logging, these client-side solutions initiate the recording or logging process only in response to a defect occurring on the client and typically send the data corresponding to a graphical user interface.